I'm director of the Reynolds Center for Business Journalism at the Cronkite School at Arizona State. I'm also author of the Forbes eBook Curbing Cars: America's Independence From The Auto Industry. I was Detroit bureau chief for the New York Times, and led Changing Gears, a public media project that studied the industrial Midwest. E: vmaynard@umich.edu T @mickimaynard @curbingcars

Tesla Takes Action, Is Cleared In A Federal Safety Investigation

The U.S. government said Friday that it has closed an investigation in fires on the Tesla MotorsTesla Motors Model S electric sedan. According to Reuters, it said it did not find a “defect trend” that led to two episodes of fires in the United States and another in Mexico.

On its website, the government said that both U.S. accidents took place after the vehicles ran over debris at high speed. No injuries occurred in either crash, and the drivers were able to get away from the vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says Tesla’s own tests replicated the situation, which led to action by the company.

The government believes “impacts with road debris are normal and foreseeable,” NHTSA said. “In this case, Tesla’s revision of vehicle ride height and addition of increased underbody protection should reduce both the frequency of underbody strikes and the resultant fire risk”

Tesla’s billionaire founder, Elon Musk, explained the repairs in detail in an unusual post on Medium. According to Musk, the odds of a fire in a Model S are 1 in 8,000, which he maintained are five times lower than a fire in a conventional vehicle.

“Nonetheless, we felt it was important to bring this risk down to virtually zero to give Model S owners complete peace of mind,” Musk said. “Starting with vehicle bodies manufactured as of March 6, all cars have been outfitted with a triple underbody shield. Tesla service will also retrofit the shields, free of charge, to existing cars upon request or as part of a normally scheduled service.”

Musk said the company feels that the repair also would prevent an accident like the one that took place in Mexico, in which the Model S hit an object hard enough to tear the wheels off the car.

The Tesla CEO’s post on Medium includes video of the shield in action. He said wind tunnel testing showed no impact on the cars’ aerodynamic properties. In fact, Musk said the shields aren’t really needed to provide a high degree of safety.

Wrote Musk, “However, there is significant value to minimizing owner inconvenience in the event of an impact and addressing any lingering public misperception about electric vehicle safety. With a track record of zero deaths or serious, permanent injuries since our vehicles went into production six years ago, there is no safer car on the road than a Tesla. The addition of the underbody shields simply takes it a stepfurther.”

Even so, the repair does not mean Tesla is completely off the hook. As NHTSA said on its website, “The closing of the investigation does not constitute a finding by NHTSA that a safety-related defect does not exist, and the agency reserves the right to take further action if warranted by new circumstances.”

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